Dear Friends,
Thanks for all your help in completing another very successful Spaghetti Dinner. It was a smashing
success thanks to the work and cooperation of so many people. It takes an army to provide almost 5,000 dinners!
People always comment that the event is run like a “well-oiled machine.” Everybody doing their part makes the
whole thing run very smoothly. THANKS!!!
You may not have known it, but it was for our long-time co-chairs, Christen and Mike Ferro, their last
Spaghetti Dinner as chairs. They are turning their authority over to Amanda Hunt. Of course, they will continue
to help with future dinners and share the wisdom they have gained over the many years of chairing the dinner. I
extend my deepest gratitude to them for their many years of leadership.
The dinner is a great act of charity because all the funds raised at the dinner go to support All Saints
Catholic School. Most of the time at Catholic parishes, fund raising events go to fund something at the parish,
but the Spaghetti Dinner goes to help support a Catholic School that, while housed on our campus, is not a parish
school. All the work you did for the dinner went to help educate children. If you were at the dinner then you saw
many of those children helping to clear tables, take out the garbage and fill water glasses. They, too, did a
wonderful job.
If the day went as planned, then I would guess you found contentment and joy in doing the hard work.
That is the nature of giving yourself away, the nature of self-giving. Pope John Paul II called this the law of the
gift. At the heart of this gift of self is a fundamental conviction that in surrendering myself to others, I gain so
much more in return. By uniting myself to another, my own life is not diminished but is profoundly enriched.
In an age of vigorous individualism, this profound point from Pope John Paul may be hard to understand.
Why should I go outside myself to find happiness? Why would I ever want to give of myself in this radical way?
Why would I want to give up the freedom to do whatever I want with my life?
From a Christian perspective, life is not about “doing whatever I want.” It is about my relationships,
about fulfilling my relationship with God and with the people God has placed in my life. In fact, this is where we
find fulfilment in life: in living our relationships well. But to live our relationships well, we must often make
sacrifices, surrendering our own will to serve the good of others. This is why we discover a deeper happiness in
life when we give ourselves in this way, for we are living the way God made us to live, which is the way God
Himself lives: in total, self-giving, committed love.
As John Paul explains, “Love consists of a commitment which limits one’s freedom, it is a giving of the
self, and to give oneself means just that: to limit one’s freedom on behalf of another. Limitation of one’s freedom
might seem to be something negative and unpleasant, but love makes it a positive, joyful and creative thing.
Freedom exists for the sake of love.”
You gave of your time and energy to create a wonderful meal for thousands of our guests and in turn
made money to help support the education of the young people at All Saints. I heard time and again last Sunday
from so many of you doing the work – that you were having fun, that you felt great doing the work, that you
would not miss this for the world. From so many newcomers I heard that they plan on helping at the dinners into
the future. Such is the nature of self-gift, we give ourselves and are blessed in return.
Peace,
Fr. Damian